This invention relates to hand tools, and more particularly fire-fighting tools for penetrating building structures to provide an opening to allow access to a fire.
During the course of fighting a fire it is often desirable to penetrate building structures, such as exterior walls, interior walls, ceilings and roofs, to gain access to the fire. For example, it is often desirable to remove building siding, plywood, and the like from an exterior wall of a building to create an opening in the exterior wall so that water can be sprayed into the building through the opening or penetration in the building wall.
Heretofore, firefighters have in general used tools comprising a sharply pointed hook at the end of a long pole for tearing down building siding, plywood, and the like. Typically, this tool is used to tear or pull down siding or the like by engaging the pointed end of the hook with an upper edge of the siding or other building material and pulling downwardly to pry or tear the building material from the building. Often, it is possible to pry the upper edge of material away from the building while the lower edge of the material remains fixed to the building. When this occurs, it is sometimes extremely difficult to remove the material from the building because the hook portion of the tool only slides along a surface of the material and is incapable of engaging an edge of the material. On these occasions, it would be highly desirable to be able to grasp an edge of the material and pull it away from the building wall. However, the tools conventionally employed by firefighters for providing a building penetration are not capable of grasping an edge of a sheet of building material.
The invention overcomes the problems associated with conventional fire-fighting tools used for penetrating building structures to provide an opening to allow access to a fire. Such problems are overcome by providing a tool that includes at least one pointed projection for prying and/or tearing building materials from a wall or other building structure, and a gripping device for grasping an edge of the material. This allows a firefighter to use a single tool for hooking materials and for grasping materials, wherein only a slight adjustment of the position of the head of the tool is required to switch from utilization of the hooking implement to utilization of the gripping implement.
The fire-fighting tool of this invention includes an elongate shaft and a building penetration implement attached to a distal end of the elongate shaft, wherein the building penetration implement includes a pair of jaws that are movable with respect to each other for releasably gripping an object, the jaws having opposing toothed surfaces for biting into an object gripped between the jaws, and at least one sharply pointed prong that extends from an edge of a first of the jaws that is opposite of the toothed surface of the first jaw.
These and other features, advantages and objects of the present invention will be further understood and appreciated by those skilled in the art by reference to the following specification, claims and appended drawings.